


We are as Real as Our Love

by natcat5



Series: Dark Month 2015 [9]
Category: Pandora Hearts
Genre: Gen, Wishing on stars, also kind of pinnochio, blue fairy - Freeform, velveteen rabbit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-25 23:30:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4980946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natcat5/pseuds/natcat5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little stuffed rabbit sends a wish up to a star. To be real, to be with the little girl he loves and who used to love him back. </p><p>Nothing goes as planned when wishes are involved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We are as Real as Our Love

**Author's Note:**

> posted a day late ;-_- much apologies

 

In the beginning, the little girl loved him very much.

She kept him close when she lay down to bed and carried him about with her during the day and hugged him tightly until he was worn. His body grew ragged and his little red clothes ripped. But still she rubbed her cheek against his velveteen fur, still kissed him goodnight, and still whispered her affections into his tattered ears.

“I love you, Oz,” she said, every night and every morning, “You’re my very best friend.”

And the small plush rabbit returned the love in kind. He always listened intently as she spoke to him, morning and night. Always offered his downy cheek as a place for her tears to fall, when she was overwhelmed with childhood woes and needed someone to cry on. He was her oldest and dearest friend, and he lay beside her as she moved from crib to bed, as her sheets went from pink to red. As her hair went from pigtails to bows, to braids to loose. As time passed and he grew more worn, more ragged.

And as she grew older, and he grew more tattered, the secrets whispered into his ears grew less, the affirmations of love sparing, and he found himself spending nights in her arms, then on the edge of her bed, then on the floor, forgotten.

“Alice, when are you going to get rid of that tattered old rabbit?” says a friend, spending the night and poking him with her foot.

“Alice, you’re too old for stuffed animals now, don’t you think?” says her father, an eyebrow raised.

“Don’t be rude, he’s my best friend,” Alice says, sniffing. “Leave Oz alone, will you?”

Something warms within him, hearing her affirm their friendship. Hearing her confirm that they are still best friends. It doesn’t matter that she forgets to kiss him goodnight. That she no longer carries him about everywhere. That she does not press her cheek to his ragged fur or whisper to him her secrets any longer. It does not matter.

And one day, when Alice is away at a friend’s house, the maid enters into her room. Oz is on his side on the floor, knocked off the bed when Alice jumped off of it hastily. The maid tsks as she sees him, before picking him up by the ear and taking him under her arm.

“Old things like this are full of germs,” she says, tutting, “Best to let it go. The Young Miss has outgrown it, anyways.”

He’s placed in a bag with other old toys, all together, and driven out of the family estate. The journey is familiar. Alice used to carry him everywhere. He remembers staring out of the back window of the car with her, waving goodbye the house and listening to her excitedly babble about where they were headed, where they were going.

But this time he’s at the top of a plastic bag, on a heap of other discarded toys. The window is open, and the wind is cold. The nighttime sky is dark and unfriendly, and he misses the warmth of Alice’s arms, and the brightness of her smile.

The car rolls over a dip in the road, and is severely jolted. The bag is flung upwards, and Oz, at the top of it, tips over and falls out of the bag and out the nearby open window.

He tumbles, across the road, down the grassy escarpment, and rolling to a stop at the base of a tree.

It’s cold.

He’s lain outside under the stars before, with Alice. On a picnic blanket with her uncle, on her back, staring up into the endless sky, adorned with lights.

But under the tree, alone in the dark, there is nothing welcoming, nothing wondrous about the sky above him. It’s looming, foreboding, and lonely.

His fur is more ragged then ever, he is damp, and his colour is faded. Oz misses Alice, but he’s acutely aware of how old he is, how little time she spends with him now. Sitting in that bag of toys with the others, he heard how this is how it goes, for toys. Once you’re old, and no longer soft, you are to be discarded. Not like if you were real. If you were real, the others said, the children keep you forever.

The cloud cover is heavy, but Oz sees a single, sparkling star emerge from the darkness of the sky, redgold and glittering. A star to make a wish on, Alice would say. _Close your eyes and count one, two-!_

 _I wish I were real,_ Oz sends up to the sky, to that single twinkling light, _I wish I were real so that Alice would love me again._

The night remains grim and cold, and Oz wilts a little more, his tattered skin sagging.

It is then that something begins flickering in front of him, a twinkle of red and gold that burns progressively brighter, growing in shape until it has assumed the form of a person. A beautiful woman, with dark hair and burning eyes and a flowing red dress. Her smile is sly, but not malicious, and as she leans down before him, Oz thinks that she looks very much like Alice.

“A wish upon a star, little rabbit?” says the woman, eyes mirthful, but not unkind, “Those very rarely work, in this day and age. But you’ve managed to catch the ear of this bored fairy, so I believe you’re in luck. You wish to be real? Well, what does that mean, truly?”

 _I want to be real so I can be with Alice again,_ Oz thinks to the fairy, desperate, _Please._

The fairy looks at him for a long moment, eyes hooded, before smiling.

“Easily done,” she says, and gathers him up into her hands, bathing him in her red and gold light. “Earnest wishes are simple. Well then, shall we count to three together, and make it come true? One, two-,”

There’s a great flash, and then everything goes white.

Oz blinks.

The white fades from his vision, and the woman is gone. All that remains is an empty forest, bathed in the pale light of dawn. It’s dewy and damp, and he shivers.

He shivers.

Oz looks down at himself, and gasps. The ragged dark fur is gone, replaced by pale skin, legs and arms. Hands with fingers on them, pink with cold. His clothes are the same, red and white waistcoat, now joined by red shorts and laced up boots. He staggers to his feet unsteadily, touching his face with his newly formed hands. Skin, everywhere. He blinks his eyes again, astonished by the fact that he _can._

His legs are wobbly, he’s never used them before, but they carry him forward well enough. He staggers over to the nearby stream, and stares at his reflection.

A human boy, blonde with green eyes, stares back at him. He looks nothing like Alice’s beloved stuffed rabbit, but he is _real._

 _This isn’t quite what I had in mind,_ he thinks, still touching his face, _But I can go find Alice now, right?_

He does not remember the car turning, on the journey the night prior. So he imagines that he just has to follow the road back the way it came, and he should come to Alice’s home.

His steps are unsteady, but he’s excited, buzzing with the thought of seeing Alice again. Of not being too tattered, or too old, but being the same as her. A person, something she can’t outgrow, or become tired of.

The road is longer, on foot, and the sun has risen into the center of the sky by the time he’s reached the small town that they drove through. He knows this place. It’s close to Alice’s house and sometimes she and her uncle would walk here together, to buy ice cream. Sometimes they’d bring Oz. Yes, he definitely knows this place, and he knows the way to Alice’s house from here as well.

Walking through the town, Oz marvels at seeing everything at eye level. He smiles when people wish him good afternoon, and shakily returns the greeting. He turns his head and looks at things with his own eyes. He runs his hands along the stalls, touches doors and walls, picks up the fruit in the market stalls, and marvels.

_So this is what it means to be real._

But still, he misses Alice.

He comes to the ice cream parlor that they’d always go to together. The one with the red velvet flavor that Alice called the ‘Oz’ flavor, and pauses in front of it. He wants to go inside. He’s curious. And maybe he can taste it, that ‘Oz’ flavor, with his own tongue for the first time. He wants to share a bowl with Alice. He can do that now, can’t he?

When he pushes open the door, he freezes dead in his tracks. Because there, sitting at a table in the back and looking utterly miserable, is Alice.

“Alice!” he calls out, unable to contain himself, or hide his excitement. Her head jerks up, and he’s distraught to see that her face is streaked with tears. Her expression morphs into one of angry confusion as he hurries towards her, and Oz wonders what’s happened, what’s wrong, what’s the matter?

“Do I know you?” she asks sullenly, and Oz stops dead in his tracks.

He stares down then, at his pink hands, new human skin. At the two legs he’s standing on, all on his own. He may be ‘real’ now, but is he still Alice’s rabbit?

He hates to see her sad.

“I-, I,” he stammers, and then folds his hands together nervously. “You look sad. What’s wrong?”

Alice stares at him, expression still sour, and suspicious. But then it crumples into something desolate, heart-broken, and she sniffles, looking down at the table.

“Some stupid maid lost my rabbit,” she growls, eyes wet, “My best friend, Oz, he’s gone.” The tears in her eyes begin to spill over, and she wipes them away quickly, before they can roll down her cheeks. “I-I’m never going to see him again.”

Oz’s heart breaks.

Alice never thought he was ratty. Never thought he was old and to be discarded. Those were things other people said, not her. She didn’t talk to him as much, it’s true. And she didn’t carry him around everywhere. But she never said that she didn’t want him anymore. She never said he wasn’t good enough for her.

She never said that she didn’t love him anymore.

“No…” he breathes out, and then more fervently, “No, you definitely will! Your best friend would never leave you alone, Alice. He’ll always find you and come back to you.”

Alice stares at him, blinking furiously. Then her nose wrinkles, and she tilts her head.

“Who _are_ you?” she asks, something a little angrier going into the furrow of her eyebrows.

Oz opens his mouth to respond, and finds he can’t. So he shuts it again, shoving his hands into his pockets and backing away.

Like this, he isn’t her rabbit.

He leaves the ice cream store, and walks back the way he came. He can’t return to Alice’s side like this, because he is not her rabbit. He is not the one she’s shared all her secrets with, all her childhood with, in its joys and sadnesses. He’s a stranger to her.

He returns to the little patch of trees, and sits down amidst the roots of the one he’d fallen against the night prior.

“I just wanted to be by her side,” he whispers, up at the sky that’s only just beginning to be streaked with the light oranges and reds of sundown, “Being real doesn’t matter if I can’t stay with her.”

Then he closes his eyes and leans his head back against the tree trunk.

When he opens them again, the beautiful red-gold fairy is again standing in front of him, her eyes knowing, and her eyebrows quirked in a way that reminds him of Alice.

“Was your wish not to your liking, little rabbit?” she asks, “You asked to be real, and so you were, but it did not have the result you desired.”

“I wanted to be real so Alice would love me again,” Oz says quietly, “But she never stopped.”

The fairy leans down in front of him. “What is realness, truly? Were you any less real when you were with her, even if you could not walk, did not have a voice of your own? You were real enough to her, weren’t you?”

Oz nods, the memories making his eyes sting. Crying? Something else new. Something else that hurts.

“We are as real as our love is,” the fairy says softly, “And your love is and always has been very strong, Oz.”

Then she smiles, and takes his face into her hands. “So, shall we grant your _true_ wish then? It wasn’t to be real, it was-,”

“ _To be with Alice again,_ ” he says fervently, and the fairy smiles before gently kissing his forehead.

There’s a great flash, and Oz shuts his eyes against the great outpouring of light.

“Oz?!”

Alice is in front of him.

He is on her bed, in her room, and she has just walked through the door, and is staring at him in shock. Then she squeals in delight and bounds forward, scooping him up into her arms.

He is a rabbit again.

He is small, and plush, with ragged velveteen fur and ragged red clothes. He’s got glass for eyes and some of his stitching is beginning to fray. He is old and a toy and dirty with use.

But he is in Alice’s arms again, and he is still her best friend, and he is still as loved by her as she is by him.

And so he is happy, all of his wishes having come true.

 

**Author's Note:**

> this is just a short, silly thing.  
> Also, somewhere Glen gets the distinct feeling that his sister is still meddling with him from beyond the grave.


End file.
